of the column had reached the brook and deployed and halted on its other bank, and already the stream was filled with naked men shouting with pleasure as they washed off the sweat of their long day’s march.  Even as I looked, the noise of the battle grew louder, and soon the symptoms of movement were evident.  The rappel was heard, the bathers hurriedly clad themselves, the ranks were formed, and the sharp, quick snap of the percussion caps told us the men were preparing their weapons for action.  Almost immediately a general officer rode rapidly to the front of the line, addressed to it a few brief, energetic words, the short sharp order to move by the flank was given, followed immediately by the “double-quick”; the officer placed himself at the head of the column, and that brave infantry which had marched almost forty miles since the setting of yesterday’s sun,—­which during that day had hardly known either sleep, or food, or rest, or shelter from the July heat,—­now, as the shadows grew long, hurried forward on the run to take its place in the front of battle and to bear up the reeling fortunes of the day.

It is said that at the crisis of Solferino, Marshal McMahon appeared with his corps upon the field of battle, his men having run for seven miles.  We need not go abroad for examples of endurance and soldierly bearing.  The achievement of Sedgwick and the brave Sixth Corps, as they marched upon the field of Gettysburg on that second day of July, far excels the vaunted efforts of the French Zouaves.

Twenty-four hours later we stood on that same ground.  Many dear friends had yielded up their young lives during the hours which had elapsed, but, though twenty thousand fellow-creatures were wounded or dead around us, though the flood gates of heaven seemed opened and the torrents fell upon the quick and the dead, yet the elements seemed electrified with a certain magic influence of victory, and as the great army sank down over-wearied in its tracks it felt that the crisis and danger was passed,—­that Gettysburg was immortal.

May I not, then, well express the hope that never again may we or ours be called upon so to celebrate this anniversary?  And yet now that the passionate hopes and fears of those days are all over,—­ now that the grief which can never be forgotten is softened and modified by the soothing hand of time,—­now that the distracting doubts and untold anxieties are buried and almost forgotten,—­we love to remember the gathering of the hosts, to bear again in memory the shock of battle, and to wonder at the magnificence of the drama.  The passion and the excitement are gone, and we can look at the work we have done and pronounce upon it.  I do not fear the sober second judgment.  Our work was a great work,—­it was well done, and it was done thoroughly.  Some one has said, “Happy is the people which has no history.”  Not so!  As it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, so it is better to have